Eyes of Fire

“Jerry, come on board and give me a hand,” Sam called cheerfully.

“Of course!” Jerry said.

Jerry was wearing dark glasses, and Sam couldn’t see her eyes. The woman was smiling, but it seemed tense, as if she wanted to be just about anywhere rather than where she was.

“You’re not afraid of boats, are you, or of being out on the water?” Sam asked, concerned.

“Bless you, no,” Jerry said. “But thanks for asking. You’re a dear.”

“I just don’t want you to be unhappy.”

“I’m not unhappy. I’m thrilled. Just thrilled.”

But she was unhappy, Sam was certain of it. Liam hopped on board just behind her, and Sam thought that Jerry jumped a mile high when Liam set his arms on her shoulders.

“I can’t wait to see these Steps,” Liam said enthusiastically.

Jim Santino jumped aboard, flinging his head to toss his hair out of his face. “Ah, yes! The mysterious Steps.”

“They’re not so mysterious,” Darlene announced, hopping aboard. “I mean, obviously they were carved by someone a million years ago, and once upon a time, they actually went somewhere.”

Adam laughed outright, and the others chuckled, as well. Except for poor Darlene, who looked offended. “Really, that’s a perfectly logical—”

“Yes, dear, of course it is,” her mother told her. “That’s why they’re all laughing.”

“At ourselves,” Adam assured her, “for not being so quick to point out the obvious!”

In another few minutes everyone had boarded. Jem was at the wheel, and Sam showed him her dive plan. A moment later, they were under way.

Their first site for the day was going to be the Steps. Sam had planned a thirty-minute dive to fifty-five feet. While Jem motored them out to the site, she sat with the children, going over the dive tables with them again so they would know how deep they could stay down and how much air they would use. Children were usually better dive students, in Sam’s opinion. Adults were too quick to assume they could stretch the safety factors built into the dive tables. Oddly enough, young divers also tended to be more careful with their equipment. She stressed to them how important that was—if someone had a hole in his tennis racket, he would be unhappy and might lose a match, but he would survive it. An improper mixture of air in a cylinder would not just be inconvenient—it could kill.

Sam had been determined to stay away from Adam on the way out, but Darlene had stars in her eyes where the man was concerned, and Brad found him just as interesting. Even when Sam had purposely gathered them around her to work on the tables, they had enthusiastically called Adam over, suddenly seeming to need him to confirm all her lessons.

“Nearly there, if you all want to start suiting up!” Jem called.

Sam slid into her own environmental protection suit, a light “skin,” since the water temperature around the island tended to remain warm, even in winter. She was an advocate of suits, though, simply because they did what their name implied—protected divers from the environment. She’d been hit a few times by the tentacles of jellyfish—with and without protection—and it was much, much better to have protection, she had discovered.

Liam Hinnerman was an old-time diver. He hated wearing a suit, but he did for her dives. He’d begun diving, he’d told her, before many of the associations that now certified divers had existed. Liam liked being a teacher. He’d wagged a finger beneath her nose, telling her, “You forget, young lady, that this certification thing is all comparatively new. I was diving when they still called a damn tank a tank instead of a cylinder. All this book learning and computers!”

She’d very patiently reminded him that with the number of sports divers that had begun enjoying the sea in the last few decades, it was necessary to train people in order to save lives.

“Humph!” he had told her. “Stupid people shouldn’t dive.”

It was difficult arguing with Liam Hinnerman. He had his own brand of logic.

Jem dropped anchor and came around to help the divers into their buoyancy control vests, weights and cylinders. Sam went through her speech, automatically slipping into her own vest and cylinder as Jem came up behind her to help her. Her speech was about taking care of coral, reminding them that it was actually alive. She also warned them that buddies needed to stay together and watch out for one another.

“We’re making this one a thirty-minute dive, folks, so enjoy the Steps, and if you take it all the way down to fifty-five feet, remember to watch yourselves coming up.”

“Watch out for our buddies—did we decide who our buddies are going to be?” Liam asked.

“Can’t be me today,” Jerry North said, waving a hand in the air. “I’ll be up here, sunning with Jem.”

“I’m with short stuff over there,” Sukee said, winking at Brad. “A promise is a promise.”

“I’m a threesome with Sam and Adam,” Darlene said, afraid that someone might try to change the previous night’s arrangements.

“I’ve got my wife!” Joey Emerson announced, smiling adoringly at Sue.

“And I’ve got my husband,” Sue said.

“Is that mushy, or what?” Brad muttered.

“Hey, kid, mind your manners!” Sukee suggested.

“Oh, I, er, I didn’t mean anything,” Brad moaned.

Adam tousled his hair. “She knows that. Women just like to give men a hard time.”

“I think it’s the other way around,” Sukee murmured suggestively.

Adam laughed, a smile on his face as he returned Sukee’s stare. The air seemed to sizzle between them.

Irritating as hell, Sam decided.

“Well, mushy or not, son, I’ve got your mother,” Lew Walker said.

“Oh, you guys aren’t mushy anymore,” Brad said.

“Ouch!” Judy murmured.

“Young man, you’d better mind your manners!” Sukee told him. Brad grinned.

“That means we’re stuck with one another,” Jim Santino told Liam, who nodded glumly in return.

“I can already tell that the dive we made the day before yesterday is going to prove to be the better of the two,” Jim said.

“But today we’re diving the Steps,” Sukee said. “Come on, short stuff, let’s get in the water. I want to see these magnificent relics.”

In twos and threes, the divers went off the back platform of the Sloop Bee. Sam held her mask to her face as she plunged in, checked to make sure that all her divers gave her an okay sign, then joined Darlene and Adam.

It was odd. Adam’s eyes, completely silver in the watery silence surrounding them, seemed very large behind his mask. He still seemed tense, watching her with the same anger he had shown her ever since they’d been at the breakfast buffet when Brian had come trundling out to demand a piece of corn muffin.

The hell with him, she decided. She pointed downward and began a slow descent, making sure that Darlene was following without suffering from any of the squeezes that could occur due to increasing water pressure.

It was a beautiful portion of the sea in which to dive. A coral slope fell slowly into the sea right by the sandy floor where the Steps plummeted downward. The Steps themselves were very large, a good foot thick, and approximately four feet by four feet wide. Following them downward, Sam and her party passed by a school of amberjack, a half dozen pretty yellow tangs, one massive grouper—a fish that weighed about five hundred pounds —and a curious barracuda. Darlene cringed at the sight of the multitoothed sea dweller. As Adam drifted by Sam to reach Darlene, it felt to Sam as if he touched the entire length of her body.

He seemed to realize the stirring he had caused and paused, staring at her.

She had to remind herself to breathe. This was ridiculous. He was behaving even more oddly than he had been now that he knew about Brian. Why? What difference did it make to him? He seemed convinced that Brian had to be hers, and angry about the baby’s father, which was absolutely ridiculous. Wasn’t it?

She was furious herself, dying to send him off the island. No, dying to hurt him the way he had hurt her. Then she had to admit that it wasn’t really the truth. The truth was, she was…

Dying to touch him. In the middle of the water. To reach out, take his hand.

No! She wanted to tear his hair out.

At least, that was what she should want, and she told herself it was what she did